Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T15:26:43.579Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ACROSTICS AND TELESTICHS IN AUGUSTAN POETRY: OVID'S EDGY AND SUBVERSIVE SIDESWIPES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2020

Keith Mitchell
Keith Mitchell*
Affiliation:
Sunderland, UK
*
*Email: mitchell.k@sky.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article considers acrotelestich wordplay in the major poets of the Augustan period, with particular reference to Ovid, and analyses its main types and characteristics. The article's final section seeks to demonstrate that Ovid invented a new category, that of political acrostics and telestichs, unique to him and uniquely suited to his own experience of Augustan terror and of the need for literary subterfuge and plausible deniability.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Cambridge Classical Journal , Volume 66 , December 2020 , pp. 165 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Cambridge Philological Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This article is a follow-up to my earlier ‘Ovid's hidden last letters on his exile – telestichs from Tomis: postcode or code?’ (Mitchell (2020)), whose underpinning concepts of encipherment, political allegory and plausible deniability continue to apply. I am sincerely grateful to Lucia Prauscello for her support throughout, and to the Readers for their expertise and recommendations, all of which have been incorporated. My thanks are due, as ever, to the staff of the Robinson Library of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and this present paper is dedicated to my late teacher, David West, sometime Professor of Latin at the University, whose presence and principle of trying ‘to be utterly faithful to everything I see and hear in the Latin’ may both be found, I hope, in at least some of these pages.

References

Works cited

Adkin, N. (2015) ʻOn a new Virgil acrostic, Aen. 6.77–84', Mnemosyne 68, 1018–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alessio, M. (1993) Studies in Vergil: Aeneid 11. An allegorical approach, Quebec.Google Scholar
Brown, E. (1963) Numeri Vergiliani: Studies in Eclogues and Georgics, Brussels.Google Scholar
Carter, M. A. S. (2002) ʻVergilium vestigare: Aen. 12.587–8', CQ 55, 615–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castelletti, C. (2012) ‘Following Aratus’ plow: Vergil's signature in the Aeneid', MH 69, 83–95.Google Scholar
Courtney, E. (1990) ʻGreek and Latin acrostichs', Philologus 134–5, 1–13.Google Scholar
Danielewicz, J. (2013) ʻVergil's certissima signa reinterpreted: the Aratean LEPTE-acrostic in Georgics 1', Eos 100, 287–95.Google Scholar
Danielewicz, J.  (2019) ‘ASTER, ASTER, ASTER: a triple transliterated Greek acrostic in Vergil's Eclogue 4.361–6', Philologus 163.2, 361–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dettmer, H. (1988) ‘A poetic signature in Propertius 1.22.2?', LCM 13, 55–6.Google Scholar
Fowler, D. P. (1983) ʻAn acrostic in Vergil (Aeneid 7.601–4)', CQ 33, 298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fredericksen, E. (2018) ʻWhen enough is enough: an unnoticed telestich in Horace Satires 1.4.14–18', CQ 68, 716–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grishin, A (2008) ‘Ludus in undis: an acrostic in Eclogue 9’, HSPh 104, 237–40.Google Scholar
Hanses, M. (2016) ʻLove's letters: an AMOR-ROMA Telestich', in Mitsis and Ziogas (2016) 199–211.Google Scholar
Harmon, A. M. (1927) ʻSay it with flowers', CP 22, 219–20.Google Scholar
Hejduk, J. D. (2018) ʻWas Vergil reading the Bible? Original sin and an astonishing acrostic in the Orpheus and Eurydice', Vergilius 64, 71–101.Google Scholar
Herbert-Brown, G. (1994) Ovid and the Fasti, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hilberg, I. (1899) ʻIst die Ilias Latina von einem Italicus verfasst oder einem Italicus gewidmet?', WS 21, 264–305.Google Scholar
Katz, J. (2016) ʻAnother Vergilian signature in the Georgics?', in Mitsis and Ziogas (2016) 69–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronenberg, L. (2017) ʻThe tenth age of Apollo: a new acrostic in Eclogue 4', Philologus 161, 337–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronenberg, L.  (2019) ʻThe light side of the Moon: a Lucretian acrostic (LUCE, 5.712–15) and its relationship to acrostics in Homer (LEUKĒ, Il. 24.1–5) and Aratus (LEPTĒ, Phaen. 783–7)', CP 114, 278–91.Google Scholar
Laterza, G. (2015) ʻAeneid 7,53–57: an acrostic?', Maia 67, 515–19.Google Scholar
Mitchell, K. (2020) ‘Ovid's hidden last letters on his exile – telestichs from Tomis: postcode or code?', CCJ 66, 000–0.
Mitsis, P. and Ziogas, I. (eds.) (2016) Wordplay and powerplay in Latin poetry, Berlin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, G. (1993) ʻNullum, Vare …: chance or choice in Odes 1.18?', Philologus 137, 142–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mozley, J. H. (1969) Ovid: The Art of Love and other poems (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Nisbet, R. G. M. (1990) ʻReview: the Georgics', CR 40, 262.Google Scholar
Pandey, N. B. (2018) ʻBlood beneath the laurels: Pyrrhus, Apollo, and the ethics of Augustan victory', CP 113, 279–304.Google Scholar
Robinson, M. (2019a) ʻLooking edgeways: pursuing acrostics in Ovid and Vergil', CQ 69, 290–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, M. (2019b) ‘Arms and a mouse: approaching acrostics in Ovid and Vergil’, MD 82, 23–73.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. (1990) Domination and the arts of resistance: hidden transcripts, Yale.Google Scholar
Simon, J. (1899) Akrosticha bei den augustischen Dichtern, 2 vols., Cologne.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (2013–14) ʻNomen inest: a declining domicile and caustic acrostics in Ex Ponto 3.3', Atene e Roma 7–8, 45–64.Google Scholar
Somerville, E. (2010) ʻNotes on a reversed acrostic in Vergil Georgics 1.429–33', CP 105, 202–9.Google Scholar
Syme, R. (1978) History in Ovid, Oxford.Google Scholar